Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity

by Anthony D. Smith

'Unto thy seed I have given this land.' From the moment of God's covenant with Abraham in the Old Testament, the idea that a people are chosen by God has had a central role in shaping national identity.
Chosen Peoples argues powerfully that sacred belief remains central to national identity, even in an increasingly secular, globalized modern world. In this important new study, Anthony D. Smith goes in search of the deep Judeo-Christian roots of the many manifestations of national identity.
This rich and timely contribution to current debates about nationalism explains the complex historical reasons behind often violent modern conflicts around issues of land, culture, religion, and politics. Tracing the development of individual nations over many centuries, it offers fascinating insights into the religious and cultural foundations of countries such as Great Britain, the United States, Israel, France, and Germany. The argument draws on a wide range of examples from historic landscapes in Ireland, Switzerland and Egypt, myths of Arthurian Britain, Holy Russia, and Byzantium, through memories of a 'Golden Age', to the modern commemoration of the 'Glorious Dead', and of victims of war.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

330 pages, Hardcover

First published November 13, 2003

About the author

Anthony D. Smith was Professor Emeritus of Nationalism and Ethnicity at the London School of Economics, and is considered one of the founders of the interdisciplinary field of nationalism studies. His best-known contributions to the field are the distinction between 'civic' and 'ethnic' types of nations and nationalism, and the idea that all nations have dominant 'ethnic cores'. While Smith agreed with other authors that nationalism is a modern phenomenon, he insisted that nations have pre-modern origins.

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anthony Smith is one of the best (as in provocative, challenging and influential) theorists of nations and nationalism around, and his mid 1980s Ethnic Origins of Nations has framed the work of a generation of scholars. This book shows how his approaches have changed, as he looks to the ways discourses of nation and nationalism have worked to make the people and their nation sacred – I may disagree with some of the detail, but the model is powerful. It has four parts (paraphrased from p 255): a myth of ethnic election by a diety, a long-standing attachment to specific places seen as both sacred and belonging to the community; a desire to recover golden age(s); and a belief that both mass and individual sacrifice has regenerative power. None of these, Smith admits, is new to or invented by nationalism, but all are used (usually collectively) to justify nations and nationalism.

The book is powerful, coherent and the case well-made, and works as a critical extension and revision of more commonly invoked arguments such as Anderson's Imagined Communities model (which in itself is often used very badly anyway). Its major shortcoming is hinted at by Smith's own admission of a limitation – its focus on experiences shaped by and within Judeo-Christian histories. Models and ideals of the sacred developed outside the frame provided by the three great west Asian monotheistic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) very often rely on a more complex set of relations, activities of the deity/deities, and interactions with place, space, and the natural world. This is not to deny the useful of the approach outlined by Smith, merely to point to its major shortcoming: it is not universal and needs local and specific testing, application, and development. This limitation aside, it remains a major contribution to studies of nationalism and nations that seems to have passed much of the field by: puzzling that.

[Jordan J. Andlovec · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a strict study of the sacred foundations of nationalism it does much to grow the imagination and give categories for thinking broadly about nations. But it lacks a theological background for understanding covenants (and especially) their relations to each other. For example the New Covenant is strikingly left out of the chapter on the subject, which says as much in itself about the “uselessness” of the New Covenant to undergird national identity as any book ever could.

[Michael DeBusk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smith offers a corrective to the prevailing modernist analysis of nationalism as a political ideology. Most modernist analysis strongly downplays the continuing influence of religion on nationalism. Smith argues modernist theories, while offering helpful political and economic explanations for the emergence of nationalism, fail to explain the persistence of nationalism, which is often fervent and emotional. To find those reasons, one must dig into the deep traditions—especially the religious traditions—of a culture. Thus, Smith’s book is a survey of mostly pre-modern religious myths, symbols, and ceremonies which have been appropriated by various nationalisms since the nineteenth century, animating their devotional appeal. Smith’s argument is convincing and his examples insightful, though it is not always clear how the evidence leads to Smith’s conclusions and the reader is left to take Smith at his word. Such is the luxury of being the preeminent scholar of nationalism in the last decades. Smith book is a refreshing supplement to scholarship of nationalism, so dismissive of religion, and to the rest of his work.